


Falling Into Your Gravity

by awkwardrandomtotally



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:27:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26901376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardrandomtotally/pseuds/awkwardrandomtotally
Summary: Louis is finally a sophomore, and math is his least favourite class. He is, most definitely, not looking forward to it, but guess what he has first period? He doesn't want to go to school at all until a clumsy, curly-headed boy tumbles into class at 8:32 am. Louis can't keep his eyes off of him, which is a problem because he really needs to pass this course. So what happens when this boy asks to pair with him for the first project of the year?
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Kudos: 8





	Falling Into Your Gravity

Louis opens his eyes. Blinking slowly, his head immediately starts throbbing at his alarm blaring from his phone atop his nightstand. With a groan, he reaches his arm out from under the blankets to feel around for his phone and give his headache some relief for a couple more minutes. He’s just about to fall back to sleep in bliss when a sharp knocking on his door startles him awake for the second painful time this early morning. He opens his eyes, and the sunlight filling his room threatens to lull him back into a state of unconsciousness until he hears the knocking again, and groans, “Come in.”

“Lou, it’s seven fifteen already.” 

“Yeah, I know mom. I’m choosing _myself_ to go back to sleep. You said I needed to be more independent, so…” he mumbles from under his pillow.

“Louis. If you want a drive to school, I’m leaving for work in 30 minutes. If you’re not ready, you can walk yourself there, but try not to be late on the first day,” His mom calls from standing in his doorway. She starts to walk away until Louis yells back, 

“Close the _door_ , mom.”

The first day. Of school. Of eleventh grade. God, Louis really has the least amount of anticipation for today, or better yet this entire year. He wishes it was the end of June again so that he could have the rest of the summer to look forward to sleeping in, playing football, hot weather, sleeping in, sleeping in, sleeping in… can you tell he’s tired? Nonetheless he’s already awake, and if he wants a drive to school he has to be up and ready to leave in 25 minutes.

Dragging himself out of bed and down the stairs, he hears all the footsteps and voices of his six siblings before he actually sees them. Carefully not to accidentally knock into someone or have someone knock into _him_ , Louis makes his way to the kitchen to grab a glass of orange juice and a muffin for breakfast. Twenty minutes later, he’s sitting (crammed, actually) in the car with almost his entire family and his mother driving, while each of his siblings get dropped off at their respective schools. Soon he’s left with just his mom and himself in the two front seats. 

When the car pulls up to the front of school, Louis pulls the door open just as his mother touches his arm to stop him.

“Just-”

“I _know_ mom, have a good day, best four years of my life, goes by so fast, all that,” He interrupts.

She sighs. “Maybe make some friends? I know Liam and Zayn aren’t in any of your classes this semester, so it might be a good idea. And yes, have a good day. I love you, sweetheart.”

“I’ll try, mom,” He highly doubts he will. “Love you, too.”

“See you after school,” His mom exclaims as he climbs out of the car and shrugs his bag onto his back. 

As he’s walking up the front steps, Louis wants to turn right back around. As he makes his way into the hallway where his locker is, Louis wants to go home. As he sulks into his first class of the semester, fucking _math_ , he wants to stop dead in his tracks, rip up all of the school work he hasn’t even received yet, and sprint out of this school. Sadly, he finds himself sinking into his usual (favourite) seat, in the corner of the back row. Louis had completely forgotten about the fact that his two best (you could say only) friends aren’t in any of his classes until his mom brought it up. He knows he has lunch to see them everyday, but it just isn’t _fair_ that Zayn and Liam have three out of four together while he has none with either.

Slumping in his seat, he’s about to contemplate faking sick to get out of this class when he hears someone hurry into the room. Looking up, he sees just about the cutest boy he’s ever laid eyes on. Almost stumbling while looking for a place to sit, Louis stares so hard he thinks his eyes might start literally burning off at this boy’s head full of chocolate-brown curls (who still _has_ curly hair at sixteen???), and milky skin mostly hidden under faded blue jeans and an adorable, fuzzy, lavender sweater, blanketing arms that are struggling to contain what looks like the seven textbooks he’s holding.

Louis has to look away. He has to. Whoever this boy is, he’s _beautiful_. Oh my god. He’s just really, really pretty, okay?!?? Louis desperately needs to focus. Atleast this boy doesn’t notice that he’s even staring as he shuffles to the back of the class and, to Louis’s surprise, plops down at the desk right beside his own. Oooooof course. 

When Ms.Adams starts taking the attendance, Louis realizes how hard it is _not_ to turn his head to embarrassingly gawk at whoever this boy is. He literally has to lean forward on his desk and place his two hands on the sides of his neck to physically stop himself from doing so. This is going to be a long period. 

He slowly starts to zone out as the steady rhythm of names being read out loud becomes familiar, until he realizes the reading has stopped, and Ms.Adams is waiting on Louis.

“Oh shoot, um- sorry, here. I’m here, I mean,” Louis finally stammers out. Right before he leans forward to close his eyes again, he hears, “Harry Styles?”

“Here,” The boy next to him states with a small smile directed towards the teacher. Louis secretly wants it directed towards _him_. But anyway.

Harry. Harry Styles. Okay, well at least it’s a little less creepy to stare at Harry without shame now that Louis knows his full name (and literally nothing else about this boy other than the fact that Louis really, really likes looking at him). 

Everyone around him is quietly chatting, and Ms.Adams is still going through attendance. Louis turns his head (finally), and sneaks a glance at Harry, who’s scribbling something in the corner of a page in a small, brown notebook. He’s overwhelmed with curiosity, thinking what in the _world_ could he be writing already because this stupid class hasn’t even started yet. Desperately craning his neck, he tries to read whatever it is, thinking he’s being successfully sneaky until he tries to move his chair closer towards Harry’s desk quietly and it makes literally the loudest squeak possible. Great. Now he’s staring at _Louis_. How the tables have turned.

“Um,” Harry asks, reluctantly and taking what seems like an entire hour to say a single word. “Can I help you?”

“No,” Louis blurts out, unnecessarily loud. “I mean- yes. Not really. I don’t know. What are you writing? She’s still taking attendance, I mean,” His face is already flaming red and he’s said one sentence to this boy. _One_. Plus, now that he can see his face better, he notices a little freckle dotting the left side of his jaw. Not that Louis even remembers.

“Oh. Nothing, it’s nothing… it’s not for class,” He mumbles, embarrassed with a blushing, low voice, and closes the notebook. 

“Well it’s obviously something,” Louis urges further, trying to warm him up with a small, inviting smile. Harry grins back shyly but only for a second, quickly looking down towards the notebook that he closed only moments before. Louis feels slightly defeated, but can sense the secondhand embarrassment from Harry a mile away, and doesn’t want to be the reason for bringing this boy down, even a tiny bit. 

“It’s okay, you don’t have to show me,” The other boy breathes out, relieved and grateful, and Louis’ glad he gave him a break. 

“I’m making no promises for the next time I ask, though,” He said with a gentle smile, and Harry lets out a laugh, breathy and warm. Louis really likes that sound. Maybe too much.

Harry breaks their eye contact to look towards the front of the classroom.

“I think class is about to start,” He whispers, turning his head back again.

“Oh,” Louis says with a slight nod, feeling faintly disappointed. Just a tad. “My name’s Louis, by the way.”

“I know,” Harry answers warmly, but still shy. “I mean- from attendance. My name’s Harry.”

“I know.” Louis smiles. “From attendance.”

He takes this as a queue to scoot his chair back and sit behind his own desk. When Ms.Adams starts talking about the course outline (gross), Louis is barely listening, replaying the echo of Harry’s laugh and picturing the flush that sprinkled his cheeks. He can’t stop smiling. Why the fuck is he smiling???? He needs serious help. 

Not being able to stop himself, Louis steals a tiny peek towards Harry who is glancing right back, holding contact only for a split second before he flicks his eyes back quickly towards the teacher with cheeks slightly flushed. Louis must have imagined that. That was not real. No way was Harry _actually_ staring at him.

While he’s lost in his own Harry-related thoughts, Louis’ interrupted yet again from the words, “Group project”, coming from Ms. Adams. A project _already_? It’s only the first day of school. He internally groans, and silently hopes for a good group. 

“I know it’s disappointing to be assigned a project so early on in the year,” No shit. “But hopefully this will allow you all to get to know each other a bit better.”

Ms.Adams describes the project, and, in all honesty, it sounds like the absolute worst thing in the world. First of all, a group project in math? How does a math project even work, Louis thought this class would just be taking useless notes and doing textbook work. The project also sounds so boring it should be considered illegal to be forced to do it. From what Louis gathers from half-listening to the teacher speak, all his group has to do is hypothetically create a new Community and Recreational Centre for the city, calculate all of the dimensions, and gather the different prices from the materials they have to use to build it. Excuse me- what? Geometry is Louis's _least_ favourite unit in math. Plus, in what world would he ever be a fucking architect?

“It’ll be done in partners,” Great. Louis can’t leave all the work to the rest of the group if he’s responsible for a whole _half_ of it.

“Are you assigning the groups?” Another student asks, and Louis tries his hardest not to sob out loud. With his luck, he’d be stuck with some random person that he can’t stand, or even worse, a really annoying teacher's pet that has their expectations set way too high for one Louis Tomlinson. 

“You can all choose your own partners for this project. I’ll give you the next ten minutes to find your group,” Nevermind. Louis would take assigned partners for the next _million_ projects rather than having to choose his own. Zayn and Liam aren’t here, so who is he supposed to work with? He doesn’t want to be anyone’s last choice, that’s just sad and quite frankly embarrassing. What the hell is-

“Um, Louis?” Stunned, he whips his head around at the call of his name to see a nervously stood Harry, with his arms glued firmly to his sides and fiddling with the hem of his light purple sweater, staring at the ground beneath Louis’s feet. “Do you think, or like, would you mind- I’m new here, so I haven’t really talked to anyone else yet, and-”

“Do you want to be partners with me?” Louis decides to spare Harry the next ten minutes that it would have probably taken him to get the question out. Plus, this time it was Harry stumbling over his words instead of Louis, and in all honestly it was pretty fucking endearing. 

“Please. I mean, only if you want to, of course…” Harry finally looks up from the ground to meet Louis’s eyes, wide and reluctant.

“Of course I want to, Harry,” He says softly, nudging one of Harry’s feet gently from where he was still sitting at his desk. Was that too much? It pulled a timid smile and matching dimples ( _dimples_ ) out of Harry, so Louis didn’t really care.

“Okay, great.”

“Amazing.”

“Amazing,” Harry’s smile and dimples grow a little deeper.

Louis stares at him for probably a couple beats too long. 

“Are you free?” Harry askes.

“Huh?” Louis looks up from Harry’s smile to his eyes. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Are you free? Like- tonight, after school,” Harry breaks eye contact again to the floor. “To work on the project.”

Louis, stunned, searches for his words for probably fifteen seconds before he blurts out, “Yeah. Yeah, probably. I mean- yes, I am. Most definitely.” Oh god.

“At like, or, where should we go?” Harry is definitely blushing, and Louis is _not_ making it up this time.

“My house is not the quietest place to work at. I have, um, six younger siblings that are all going to be home.”

“We can go to my place, if you want?” Harry looks back up, and Louis pretty much feels like he’s going to melt into a puddle on the floor.

“Sure, yeah. That works,” He doesn’t know how he even manages to answer him.

“Okay, I’ll just- can I text you my address?”

“Of course, yeah, totally,” He gulps.

“Louis?”

“Yeah?”

“Your number, Louis,” Harry says warmly, digging into his pocket and pulling out his phone to wave it slightly in the air. “I need it. To text you the address.”

“Oh, yes- sorry. Here,” What is _wrong_ with him today. 

Louis quickly types his number and name into a contact, and hands Harry’s phone back to him. His fingers brushed his own, and Louis almost died of a heart attack but Harry just smiles shyly back at him, breathing out a small, “Thank you,” and goes to sit at his own desk again.

For the rest of the period, Louis can’t stop thinking about it, him, Harry, he doesn’t even know, and at lunch he barely remembers saying anything at all, being too caught up in his own thoughts to listen to whatever Zayn and Liam were rambling on about. 

He may be changing his mind about math class. Perhaps. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! I hope you all liked the first chapter of the first fic I've ever written. I'll try to post updates regularly, and I'll aim for once or twice a week. The title of this story is inspired by a song called Gravity, by Sara Bareilles, and I recommend you listen to it while you read :) Anyways, thanks for reading the first chapter and I hope you fall in love with Louis and Harry as much as I have in this fic <3


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